


All These Sorrows (I Have Seen)

by Anonymous



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Ambiguity, Car Accidents, Depression, Derek and Stiles are the Same Age, Implied Relationships, M/M, a little bit of pining and angst thrown in there, am i sorry anymore? who knows, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-17 00:44:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3508796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was the first thing Derek saw while he stood on the side of the road.  </p><p>Derek could have sworn he knew him. The boy who had jumped out of his car before it even came to a complete stop. The boy who glanced across to the other side of the road then slowly fell to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably.</p><p>The boy, a teenager, who familiar to Derek and whose name was on the tip of Derek’s tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All These Sorrows (I Have Seen)

_Why did he always have to look so sad?_

No matter how many days Derek watched him, he always looked so sad.

\---

The ringing in his ears was unbearable and the world was turning as if he was rolling down a hill. But as soon as Derek laid his eyes on him, he felt anchored. His memories were still fuzzy and the ringing continued, but he felt grounded.

He was the first thing Derek saw while he stood on the side of the road.  

Derek could have sworn he knew him. The boy who had jumped out of his car before it even came to a complete stop. The boy who glanced across to the other side of the road then slowly fell to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably.

The boy, a teenager, who familiar to Derek and whose name was on the tip of Derek’s tongue. But it got jumbled up with all the other things he couldn’t remember. Something about high school and summer and senior year.

Somehow Derek knew the boy was important.

Derek tried to move his feet, but they were stuck in their place, an invisible force tying him to the sidewalk. There was a pull to something behind him, though, and it was almost as strong as the pull towards the boy. He looked over his shoulder and saw a ghastly scene laid out before his eyes.

A completely smashed car rested upside down in the ditch closest to where Derek was standing. A few yards away what looked to be a pickup truck and a minivan melded together under searing flames.

He thought he saw pieces to a fourth car, but all the wreckage was so scattered it could have easily come from the others.

Bystanders gawked at the wreck and some, including the boy, cried. Emergency workers bustled back and forth trying to keep everyone safe and away from the fire, while police directed traffic around the accident. One paramedic stood over a stretcher at the back of an ambulance frantically trying to revive the person he was bent over. Derek couldn’t see either person’s face, but when the paramedic gave one last defibrillation, stopped, stepped away, and slowly shook his head at the local Sheriff, Derek felt released from his spot, free to go to the boy and try to comfort him.

The next thing he knew, Derek was well hidden in the dense, wooded tree line of the boy’s back yard, staring at him inside the warmly lit house.

\---

Derek promised himself he wouldn’t try to figure out his name.

After all, don’t people say when you name something, you get attached?

He wasn’t planning to say, to get attached.

He just needed to figure out what was so special about him.

\---

The ringing in Derek’s ears still continued and slowly, one by one, some of his memories faded back.

His name and his favorite color.

His parents’ names and his sisters’ names.

The boy's name.

Stiles.

There were still large gaps missing from Derek’s memory. He couldn’t remember enough to stop world from being constantly off kilter. The only thing that seemed to help was Stiles. Looking at him through the large windows that covered the back of the first floor of his house.

Ever since the first time Derek saw him, Stiles made him feel steady.

 _But why did he always have to look so sad? Why was I the only one to notice?_ Derek thought.

His body language seemed to screamed that something was wrong, and yet no one could see the signs.

\---

Stiles was gone.

Derek couldn’t tell how long he was gone for, but all he knew was that his lanky frame was no longer silhouetted by warm light, that really held no warmth at all.

While he was absent from the house, Derek managed to think about himself for a bit. A few more memories resurfaced; however, none of it could help, it was all just small snippets of larger memories strung together in an unrecognizable tangle.

_And why hadn’t anyone tried to contact me? Surely someone is wondering where I've been. They did notice I hadn't been home, right?_

When Stiles and his father, the town’s Sheriff, returned, Derek could see how much more worn Stiles seemed to be. Dark circles rested under his eyes and a perpetual ache had formed in the spot right where his neck and shoulder met.

Like before, no one else seemed to notice it.

\---

Time was an odd thing. One moment it moved a mile a minute and the next it seemed to drag on for eternity.

Stiles made it feel correct though, seconds were second, minutes were minutes, and eternity seemed a long way away.

\---

For the rest of the summer, Stiles showed himself as minimally as he could. Whether he was hiding from his family, his problems, or his sadness, Derek didn’t know.

But sometimes in the middle of the night, long after the last light in the house was turned off, Stiles would come out of his room.

He would float across the house as quietly as a ghost, silently completing tasks as to not wake his father: brewing hot tea or making instant hot cocoa, watching muted television, or stepping out onto the back porch to watch the stars and the moon shine brightly against the night sky.

Stiles was most at peace at these times. Whatever troubled him was asleep with everything else. When the day came though, all that was gone and Stiles just looked sad.

One night while he stood outside, Derek tried to get a better look at him. He tensed and whipped his head in Derek’s direction, and Derek quickly slunk back farther into the shadows. Derek could see something like hop flash across Stiles’s face for a split second before it was replaced with a frown. Stiles relaxed after a breath or two and the feeling of peace flooded back over him.

For the moment he no longer looked so sad.

\---

It was easy to see things were growing worse for Stiles a school started up again. If Derek was correct, it was senior year. He had always heard it was the best year of high school, but if that was true, why did Stiles grow even more into himself? Why did his sadness bleed out all around him?

\---

Time remained a funny thing to Derek . The concept of days, weeks, and months were now based on Stiles’s rarely wavering schedule. The Sheriff worked while Stiles was a school and came home in time for dinner. A different friend of Stiles would visit every day or so after school, but they always left after a couple hours. The rest of the time Stiles was home alone.

But there always seemed to be one day of the week especially reserved for Stiles.

Stiles would wake up at the crack of dawn to eat breakfast with his father before he needed to leave for the station. Those days the Sheriff worked multiple shifts and sometimes wouldn’t return until well after the sun had set. And on those days, Derek was able to watch Stiles uninterrupted.

He would go back to his room and not wake up late in the afternoon. Or he would remain downstairs after the house was empty and sit on the couch to watch the rising sun.

Stiles would clean, or read, or quietly study.

He would be fine, almost content.

But sometimes he wasn’t fine.

He would cry so hard his sobs would shake his body, or sit unmoving for hours on end with a haunted look on his face, or stare at the front door as if he was waiting for someone to walk through it.

No one ever did.

\---

Derek didn’t realize Stiles’s birthday had passed until a couple days had gone by. Looking back, he guessed it to be on a monday, one of the weekdays the Sheriff was off from work. The Sheriff made dinner while Stiles entertained his close group of friends.

For the first time in a long time, Stiles genuinely looked happy, and that night, the darkness didn’t bother to call for him.

\---

One day Derek finally decided to follow Stiles to school.

He had to give Stiles a round of applause for being a great actor. From the moment Stiles stepped onto school grounds it was like watching a completely different person than the one he had spent months watching from the shadows.

His shoulders were no longer folded in on themselves and an fake, easy smile graced his lips. Stiles looked like nothing was wrong, but Derek knew that wasn’t true.

Derek wondered how he found the strength to even plaster on a fake smile.

Stiles’s friends acted like everything was okay too. Maybe Stiles had everyone fooled.

It was easy to blend in the crowded hallways filled with other teenagers, to them Derek was just another person in the way of getting to class on time, but one would think after not being seen for months at least one person would say hello Derek. Wasn’t he the captain of the basketball team? Not even a teacher looked his way as he stood outside each classroom waiting for Stiles to leave for his next class.

Lunch was painful to watch. Once or twice Stiles wore a real smile, but then faded back to the fake one, or no smile at all. Some of his so called friends looked as though they noticed something was going on with Stiles, but no one said a word about it.

Derek would have said something.  

On the way to his last class of the day, Stiles took the longer but less used route past the library. Derek was following at a respectable distance when Stiles stopped and looked at a framed picture on the wall.

He stared mournfully at the plaque, took a deep calming breath and wiped the tears from his face, before hurrying down the rest of the hallway to class.

Derek was curious about what had shaken his steeled facade and walked to look at it for himself.

He looked at the framed picture and remembered.

\---

All the foggy memories sharpened and the ringing in his ears stopped.

Everything overwhelmingly fell into place.

The noise of life was now as deafening as the ringing, then the silence, had once been.

\---  

Derek found Stiles’s classroom and waited for him by the door. He slid down the wall until he hit the cool tile of the floor and tried to keep the tears from spilling over the edge and onto his cheeks. Derek hadn’t let himself cry in a very long time.

_How could I ever put Stiles through all this pain? It’s all my fault. It is all my fault._

The words repeated over and over in Derek’s head until all the syllables blurred together.

Derek only got up from the floor when the bells released the floodgates of high schoolers eager to get home.

\---

Those people were right. Names do lead to attachment, but Derek was attached to Stiles long before everything had happened.

Stiles was the single most important person in the world to Derek.

Derek loved him. He had always loved him.

But now he could never make Stiles happy again, and that’s what hurt Derek the most.

\---

Ever since Derek saw the plaque hanging alone in the hallway, time seemed to correct itself.

It was easier to follow the days now, to figure out how much time he’d lost track of.

Everything just hurt Derek more.

\---

Today was Halloween, and Stiles was home alone.

His friends had left a while ago in search of a party. And it was late enough at night that most of the young children out trick-or-treating would be in bed.

After mustering up enough courage, Derek figured this was as good as day as any to contact Stiles.

He left the familiarity of the backyard woods and ventured to the front. Standing in front of the door, Derek thought back to all the times he saw Stiles waiting for it to open.

_Maybe I’m the one he’s been waiting for._

He managed to knock on the front door with two thundering pounds.

Stiles flicked on the porch light and fumbled slightly with the door’s deadbolt. He wiped the ghosts of tears from his red rimmed eyes. Stiles frowned in confusion when he saw no one standing on the porch.

As Stiles locked the door back up, Derek’s heart broke.

_He never saw me._

Derek had been hoping that Stiles would see him and everything would go back to normal. Everything would be okay again.

He should have known better than to hope.

_He will never be able to see me._

_How could he?_

_I’m dead._

****  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For those that haven't guessed or want to be prepared: Derek is actually a ghost and is sorta haunting Stiles, not just being creepy. 
> 
> Derek and Stiles were born only a few months apart, and they grew up together as close as two people who aren't related could get. Sometime around the beginning of junior year they got their heads out of their butts and both admitted they were past the point of no return in the feelings area for each other. Then they were officially in a relationship, much to the relief of their friends. 
> 
> Stiles tried not to be smug went they were voted cutest couple in school. It didn't work. 
> 
> On the first day of summer before senior year, Derek was headed to Stiles's house to talk about their future after high school when he was forced to swerved into oncoming traffic (to miss getting hit by a drunk driver who went on to hit the car behind Derek's) and lost control of his car. He died in the care of Beacon Hill's finest with his supposed to be future father-in-law standing by his side. Stiles was just a minute too late. 
> 
> The funeral was beautiful. Most of the town came to show their support for the Hales. Derek was too young to die. Stiles had tears in his eyes through most of it. He only started to cry when he was clutching tightly onto Derek's two sister. Little Cora's blubbering demands for her big brother to come back sent him over the edge. He wasn't able to say the eulogy he had managed to write. 
> 
> Life was never the same with out Derek.


End file.
